A lawyer representing a group of nuns under investigation by a national child abuse probe has been rapped by one of Scotland’s top judges for attempting to prevent the sisters from giving evidence.
The Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry will next week look at establishments run by the Sisters of Nazareth order in Aberdeen, Cardonald, Kilmarnock and Lasswade following hearings regarding facilities run by the Daughters of Charity of St Vincent de Paul in January.
The Aberdeen facility Nazareth House, on Aberdeen’s Claremont Street, was founded by six women from the order in 1862 and was once home to more than 300 children.
However, the nuns from the children’s home have been dogged by allegations of historical abuse.
During a police investigation in 1997, more than 40 complaints were made by former residents – one woman claimed she had been beaten so hard she lost her hearing, and another said he had been submerged in near-boiling water by the sisters.
The home has now been turned into flats.
The Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry, which launched in 2015, is one of the most wide-ranging public inquiries ever held in Scotland, and it has full powers to compel witnesses to give evidence.
The Rt Hon Lady Smith, the chairwoman of the inquiry, recently responded to a request from solicitor Denis Moloney.
Mr Moloney, who is representing five sisters from the order who are understood to have been posted within the period under investigation to at least one of the Nazareth Houses in Scotland, had appealed for the chairwoman of the inquiry to not compel the five witnesses to give evidence.
He had argued that in the views of a psychiatrist, they were “deemed as totally unfit to participate in the inquiry”.
However, in her decision, the Rt Hon Lady said she would not revoke orders compelling the sisters to give evidence, and said: “I have never before experience such a display of unprofessional behaviour on the part of a solicitor”.
From Tuesday next week, evidence will be heard from a number of former residents and other witnesses from the Sisters of Nazareth establishments.
The hearings are expected to last through May and June.
Mr Moloney, of Belfast firm Donnelly and Wall, said: “We act for a number of the Sisters [not the Congregation] and full co-operation would always be afforded to the Rt Hon Lady Smith in her most noble and honourable work.
“All individual Sisters are fully co-operating.”
